


look at the stars, look how they shine for you

by MotherKarizma



Series: here comes the sun [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Domestic Avengers, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Past Drug Addiction, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Is Not Helping, completed series, reading the previous works is necessary for context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:42:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22889416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherKarizma/pseuds/MotherKarizma
Summary: “So what do you want?” Tony asked when Peter shuffled groggily into the kitchen one morning.Peter, barely awake and sporting a serious case of bedhead, blinked a few times. “Huh?”“For your birthday. What do you want?”“How did–“ Peter stared at him with wide, incredulous eyes, suddenly feeling much more alert. “How did youknow?”“Don’t insult my intelligence.”Clint pointed his fork in Peter’s direction and said through a mouthful of bacon, “Tell himnothing.I made the fatal mistake of admitting I wanted a new pickup truck last Christmas. He bought me five Ferraris.Five of them.”Tony shrugged. “I couldn’t decide.”“I live on a fucking farm! What the hell did you expect me to do with five Ferraris?”Peter said faintly, “Please don’t buy me five Ferraris."-----Peter isn't much of a birthday person, and insists upon a no-gift policy when his nineteenth approaches. Tony isn't much of a rule-follower.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Avengers Team, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: here comes the sun [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1633516
Comments: 50
Kudos: 1114
Collections: The Best Irondad/Spiderson Fics, The Best Peter Parker Whump Fics, ellie marvel fics - read





	look at the stars, look how they shine for you

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE TO NEW READERS: this is the eleventh work in a 12-part series! i highly recommend reading the previous works first, then returning to this one, as this work makes little to no sense as a stand-alone.
> 
> sdfkjhdsjfdjsfb honestly i'm not too happy with how this one turned out but i hope y'all like it anyway! second to last installment!!
> 
> [coldplay - yellow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qnqYL0eNNI)  
> \\\look at the stars  
> look how they shine for you  
> and everything you do//

Peter had never been much for celebrating birthdays.

At least, he’d never been much for celebrating _his_ birthday.

Something about having a room full of smiling people sing to him while he sat in front of a cake, all eyes watching his every move, made him immensely uncomfortable. In a way, he was glad May and Ben had never been able to afford throwing him a true party, to rent out a room at Chuck-E-Cheese for thirty screaming children to destroy. Even at the tender age of eight, he hadn’t understood how anybody could actually _enjoy_ that sort of chaos, could actually call it _fun_. Pizza, Star Wars, and a warm _I love you_ were all he’d ever needed.

Unfortunately, those days of low-key celebrations were over.

He wasn’t quite naïve enough to believe he could be essentially adopted by a famous billionaire and get away with such simplicity – which was why Peter very conveniently neglected mentioning to any of the Avengers that his nineteenth birthday was coming up.

Naturally, Tony found out anyway.

* * *

“So what do you want?” Tony asked when Peter shuffled groggily into the kitchen one morning.

Peter, barely awake and sporting a serious case of bedhead, blinked a few times. “Huh?”

“For your birthday. What do you want?”

“How did–“ Peter stared at him with wide, incredulous eyes, suddenly feeling much more alert. “How did you _know?_ ”

“Don’t insult my intelligence.”

Clint pointed his fork in Peter’s direction and said through a mouthful of bacon, “Tell him _nothing._ I made the fatal mistake of admitting I wanted a new pickup truck last Christmas. He bought me five Ferraris. _Five of them._ ”

Tony shrugged. “I couldn’t decide.”

“I live on a fucking farm! What the hell did you expect me to do with five Ferraris?”

Peter said faintly, “Please don’t buy me five Ferraris. Or, like, any.”

“Not a car man, then,” Tony said as he pressed a plate of food into Peter’s hands. “Understandable. They’re slow. Would you prefer a private jet?”

“Mister Stark!”

“Jesus, kid. Don’t give yourself an aneurysm.” Tony rolled his eyes. “I’m just messing with you. Seriously, though, what do you want? You’ve gotta give me something to work with here.”

He would, honestly – but something told him any request he made would be rejected on account of being worth nothing more than pocket change in comparison to Tony’s assets.

“You’re not gonna like this, but, uh.” Peter winced, slumping in his seat. “I kind of don’t want anything?”

“You’re right. I don’t like that.”

“I’ve never really celebrated my birthday,” he admitted, halfheartedly spearing a piece of scrambled egg on his fork. “I don’t like all the attention, you know? You’re just supposed to sit there and smile while everyone sings to you and gives you free stuff. It’s _weird_.”

Tony fixed him with a deadpan look.

“You got bitten by a radioactive spider and developed the ability to stick to walls. You might want to rethink your definition of ‘weird.’”

Peter sighed heavily and said, mostly just to get it over with, “I don’t know. A watch or something?”

“Too mainstream.” Tony drained the last of his coffee and stared thoughtfully into space. Peter could practically see the gears turning in his head. “I’ll figure something out.”

When Tony left the kitchen, no doubt to continue his birthday scheming in private, Peter looked at Clint and whispered, “Should I be scared?”

Clint nodded morosely, akin to a surgeon delivering very bad news. “Yes.”

* * *

Peter shot an aggravated look at Tony, who’d been glancing not-so-discreetly over his shoulder for the past ten minutes as he scrolled through his Twitter feed. “Do you think you’re being subtle? Because you’re not.”

“Subtlety isn’t my forte,” Tony said smoothly, staring at Peter’s phone screen in earnest now that he’d been caught. “You keep liking shit about goats. Do you want a goat?”

“That’s – that’s not what ‘GOAT’ means, Mister Stark.”

“What else is goat supposed to mean besides goat?”

“It’s…” Peter waved him off with a sigh. “Nevermind.”

“’Tea.’ Seeing a lot of that too. Do you even drink tea?”

Peter turned the screen off and stood, grinding his teeth together. “I’m gonna go to my room.”

Tony called after him, “What’s ‘shade’? Do you want sunglasses? I can get you sunglasses!”

* * *

“Do you want–“

“ _No_ ,” Peter said without looking up from the delicate wiring in front of him. “I don’t want a car, or a goat, or a beach house, or–“

“You do not want green eggs and ham?” Tony wheeled the stool he was seated upon over to place himself in Peter’s peripheral vision, quirking an eyebrow at him. “You do not like them, Sam-I-Am?”

“You know what? At this point, I’d take green eggs.”

“Tell me what you want and I’ll stop nagging you.”

“You can’t give me what I want.”

“Try me.”

Peter sighed and dropped his tools onto the metal work table perhaps a little too roughly.

“I want my family back,” he said, pretending to inspect the small piece of tech in front of him to avoid looking Tony in the eyes. “I want my friends back. I want you to build a time machine so I can go back to the first time I used and punch myself in the face. Can you do that?”

Tony was silent for a long moment.

“Might be a little above my pay grade,” he finally said with forced lightness.

Peter spared a glance at him and felt a surge of guilt. Something like regret gleamed in Tony’s eyes, hard as he tried to hide it.

“Sorry,” Peter said quietly. “I wasn’t trying to snap at you. I just really… _really_ don’t want anything. You’ve given me plenty.”

“Okay.”

Peter looked at him in suspicion, eyes narrowed. “Okay?”

“Yep.” Tony wheeled himself back over to his own table. Peter searched for some hint of sarcasm or hurt feelings and found nothing but calm acceptance. “If you really don’t want me to buy you a present, I won’t buy you a present. Star Wars marathon, maybe? Pizza?”

“Yeah,” Peter said slowly. “That…actually sounds perfect. Thanks, Mister Stark.”

Nevertheless, he could still see the gears turning in Tony’s head. He chose to ignore it.

* * *

Ignoring the obvious signs that Tony was still planning something larger might have, in hindsight, been a mistake.

The morning of Peter’s nineteenth birthday started out normally enough. Aside from an occasional hug or _happy birthday_ said in passing, nobody gave him anything, presented him with any wrapped packages, or made any attempt at decorating. Peter was thoroughly relieved.

Then, at noon, Natasha walked into the common room and tossed his shoes onto the couch beside him.

“Lace up,” she said simply. “We’re going out.”

“Where?”

“You don’t need to know.”

Peter thought of protesting, but the second he opened his mouth to do so, Natasha gave him her patented, raised-brow, _try me bitch_ look, and – well _._ She was kind of terrifying.

He put on his shoes.

* * *

After lunch out and a terribly violently movie that Peter was iffy on but Natasha had ardently loved, she insisted on window shopping. Peter was certain she had never entertained the idea of window shopping once in her entire life until this very moment.

“What’s going on?” He asked sharper than he intended to. He couldn’t help but lean into that paranoid voice in the back of his head, insisting something was amiss. The last time Natasha tried to keep him busy and distracted, it was because his secret identity had been leaked to the entire planet.

Peter couldn’t fool himself, though: he knew exactly what was amiss. His mentor had given in way too easily to his no-gifts request. Tony Stark _never_ gave in without a fight.

“Nothing’s going on,” Nat said breezily. “Want to go to the LEGO store?”

“Can we?” Peter asked, eyes wide. He knew that she was only trying to derail his train of thought, really, he did – but this was _the LEGO store_. “You’re not buying me anything, though, right? Because that would count as a present.”

“I’m not buying you anything,” she confirmed with the slightest of smiles.

A quick look couldn’t hurt, right?

* * *

“Miss Romanoff, I swear, if there are five new Ferraris in the garage…”

By the time Happy drove them through the Tower’s security checkpoint, the sun was low in the sky, and anxiety was once again gnawing at Peter’s insides.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “He didn’t buy you a Ferrari. I think he learned his lesson with Clint.”

“So he did buy me something?”

“He didn’t _buy_ it,” she said. “That would be highly illegal.”

Before Peter could make any sense of that, Happy rolled to a stop and turned off the car. There didn’t appear to be any new vehicles in the garage, but Tony already owned so many that it was hard to tell.

His hands shook as they took the elevator up to the fifteenth floor, and he bounced his leg incessantly. Natasha kept giving him these oddly pleased looks when she thought he wasn’t looking, like she knew some fantastic secret that he wasn’t privy to, and _that_ didn’t make him feel any better.

Peter’s entire body was tense as the doors slid open. He fully expected there to be an explosion of celebratory noise, a confetti cannon, _something_ excessive and unnecessary – Tony was, after all, correct when he said subtlety wasn’t his forte. That man never half-assed anything, especially the things he’d been explicitly asked not to do.

But the common room was…calm. There was no confetti, no noise. Not even so much as a banner or balloon in sight. There was only a stack of pizza boxes on the coffee table and _Return of the Jedi_ queued up on the TV, ready to play. Tony had delivered exactly what he’d promised. Nothing more, nothing less. The rest of the team was already lounging across couches and armchairs, casual and smiling.

“Oh,” Peter exhaled, shoulders drooping. “That’s – a first.”

“What is?” Tony asked.

“You not being extra.”

Tony blinked. “I…don’t even know how to decipher that. You really should get a translator.”

“I kind of thought you were planning something huge,” Peter admitted sheepishly, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Like a big party or something. You know, Stark style.”

“You said you wanted pizza and Star Wars. So–“ Tony gestured toward the boxes and television screen. “Pizza and Star Wars it is.”

Peter was just about to drop onto the couch next to Tony when Steve said, “We did get you a present, though.”

“We?” Peter glanced between all the faces that were staring at him, some trying to hide their excitement, others full-on grinning. “Natasha promised you didn’t buy me anything.”

“We didn’t. That would be highly–“

“–illegal,” Peter finished for him.

“I was gonna say ‘immoral.’ But yes, it would also be quite illegal.”

“Do I even want to know?”

Without further explanation and with a bright, exuberant sort of light in his eyes, Tony took Peter by the elbow and guided him to stand at the door of his own suite, feet away from the elevator.

“Present,” Tony called out with a smirk. “You may reveal yourself.”

The door to his suite opened, and Peter’s knees buckled, heart pounding wildly in his chest. Tony already had an arm wrapped around his waist to steady him, as if he’d expected such a reaction.

Peter said, quiet and strangled, “ _Ned?_ ”

Ned only grinned at him, looking about a millisecond away from bursting into tears. Behind him, MJ stepped out of the suite, arms crossed over her chest, and smirked fondly.

“What’s up, dork?”

**Author's Note:**

> !!!!
> 
> wanted to let you guys know a couple things: i'm expecting the 12th to be the longest in the series, so it might not get posted until friday or saturday. also, due to the sheer volume of comments i'm now receiving on this series, i unfortunately won't be able to respond to everyone anymore, but please know that i read & adore every single one of them!!
> 
> and i want y'all to do something for me because i'm v proud of myself for how i organized this: go back and look at the title of the first work and then look at the title of this one. might honest to god be my favorite thing about this entire series.
> 
> thanks for reading! i'm so not ready for this series to end but i'm so excited for you guys to read the final installment!


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